Einstein: A Life in Science and Music

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Brian Foster (Donald H Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics, Donald H Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics, University of Oxford)

Einstein

Name: Einstein
Price: 118.95 AUD
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ISBN: 9780198794875

A Life in Science and Music

Brian Foster (Donald H Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics, Donald H Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics, University of Oxford)

$118.95

Hardback

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English

Oxford University Press
23 February 2026

Biography: science, technology & engineering; History of science; Relativity physics

Albert Einstein had two lifelong passions, physics and music: this is the story of Einstein's life told through these twin lenses. Thoughtfully and rigorously illustrating the ways in which Einstein's musical life and personal and scientific life were mutually influenced, this book illuminates new and different aspects of his complex personality. Throughout Eistein's life, music became an escape both from the intellectual demands of revolutionising twentieth-century science and from the social obligations and commitments in his personal life.

Although the central theme of the book is Einstein's musical life, descriptions of his main contributions to physics, the special and general theories of relativity, are also given in terms understandable to those with no prior knowledge of physics or mathematics. Tracing his life through his formative years in Germany, his flight to Italy, and then education in Switzerland, the book goes on to cover his rise to eminence through the four papers written in his annus mirabilis of 1905 and the eclipse observations in 1919 which propelled him to world fame.

Through the examination of Einstein's relationship with music, this book throws new light onto the personal and professional life of arguably the greatest of all scientists.

By: Brian Foster (Donald H Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics Donald H Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics University of Oxford)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 253mm, Width: 178mm, Spine: 44mm
Weight: 1.480kg
ISBN: 9780198794875
ISBN 10: 0198794878
Pages: 704
Publication Date: 23 February 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

1: Growing up wih music 2: Adolescent in Aarau 3: Zurich: the physicist in embryo 4: Bern: patents, children, and music 5: Relativity & revolution 6: The young academic: Zurich & Prague 7: Relativity revisited: the music of the spheres 8: The early Berlin years 9: World fame and the bending of light 10: The itinerant professor

Brian Foster obtained his D. Phil from Oxford in 1978. He then went on to lead the particle physics group at Bristol until 2003, subsequently returning to Oxford as head of Particle Physics from 2004 to 2011. In 2010 Foster was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the University of Hamburg/DESY. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Royal Society and was its Vice-President in 2018. In 2003, he won the Max Born Medal and was appointed OBE. He is Donald H. Perkins Professor Emeritus of Experimental Physics at Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College.